


The Shell She Created

by evil_moo_bunny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Gen, I Just Play Around With The Canon, Natasha Is A Good Mentor, Sort of CA:CW Compliant, Wanda's Backstory is not Canon Compliant, canon compliant character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 16:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12752085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_moo_bunny/pseuds/evil_moo_bunny
Summary: Wanda has been through a lot and isn't sure she's really a person anymore.  She can't even smile.  Natasha is there to assure her that there's more to being a person, and smiling than meets the eye.





	The Shell She Created

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write a funny fic about how scary Natasha and Wanda must be when they smile in combat. Apparently, I couldn't do this without emotions becoming involved. 
> 
> I played fast and loose with the canon here, especially when it comes to Wanda's backstory.

Wanda couldn’t remember a time when she smiled with any frequency. Growing up in a small, poor, war-torn country didn’t leave much room for innocence. The only time she remembered smiling is when her entire family was safe in their apartment; wrapped up in her father’s arms next to Pietro while her mother sang the old songs. She could almost forget that there was a world outside of the four of them, if only for a little bit.

Then the bomb came and took her parents away. With them left the easy, happy smiles of childhood and safety.

After that, she only smiled when Pietro couldn’t stand it anymore and went out of his way to lift her spirits. Even before Hydra he was an exceptionally fast child, and he would race around the markets stealing sweets and small trinkets to delight her. It didn’t always work, but it was enough that she at least remembered what it meant feel loved and safe and happy.

Together they wandered the streets of their ruined city, leaning on each other and singing the old songs as the bombs continued to create more orphans. 

Winter was fast approaching and they both knew that there would be no surviving it on the streets. Pietro was out stealing gloves when he was caught by a man as scary as he was charming. He convinced Pietro to lead him to Wanda, and to both of them he made a promise: come with him and he would give them food, safety, and a chance to remain together. But most importantly, he promised them power.

And power he gave, but at a terrible cost. She had no control at first and drove the men trying to help hone her powers to madness. With every one of their screams she lost some important piece of herself. It was the same piece that had been broken after the death of her parents and eroded on the streets. No one noticed the disconnected look her eyes. No one saw the depths to which she was sinking. No one saw, or cared, that she was slowly retreating into herself. 

No one except Pietro. He would sing the old songs with her at night, and tell her bad jokes based on the scientists who worked on them. He would make her talk about the life they would lead once they broke free from their cells. Together, they dreamed of freedom and power and happiness. 

And briefly, they had it. But they were still so young and innocent in ways that only harmed   
them. Mistakes were made, deadly in consequence and devastating in scope. In the rubble of her beloved homeland Wanda saw more children made orphans, more homes destroyed. All this she could have handled, except that for the first time she stood absolutely alone. She walked the streets and sang the old songs with no accompaniment and turned them into a dirge. With every step she walked the final pieces of her self crumbled and faded, leaving a shell behind.

Oddly enough, the shell could smile. It could at least pretend to. The Avengers came and offered her work, and Wanda took it because it was what Pietro would have wanted to do. Besides, winter was once again approaching and Wanda knew that if left alone she would let herself freeze to death. Her shell respected and even liked her co-workers, if one could call them something so mundane. She could sit around the table and pull her lips upward at Falcon’s bad jokes and even worse attempts at flirting with everyone. When Captain America asked her if she was doing okay the shell could put a reassuring look on her face and say she was doing fine, thank you. Vision came the closest to breaking through the shell with his sweetness and eager attempts , but Wanda wasn’t going to let that happen since she didn’t know herself what was left to find. The shell even began to forget that it was a shell, until Natasha happened.

Natasha spent a lot of time with Wanda. At first she thought it was just part of the training, but then Nastasha would spend time chatting with her in the off hours. It turns out she knew Sokovian, because of course she did, and the two of them would sit in front of the over large windows and talk about things that didn’t matter in a language no else knew.

It took months before the Wanda shell realized that they were friends. 

Of course, because Natasha is Natasha she never stopped training her. She trained her physically, something Hydra didn’t care about since what made her special was her mind. Natasha taught her how to throw a punch, how to kick, how to stand so that if someone attacked she wouldn’t fall. She showed her the correct angle to hold your head when lying to someone in authority and how to spot the lies of others.

Before the Wanda shell knew what was happening, Natasha was taking her into the field. Wanda panicked the first time, saying that she had no control. To that, the Black Widow looked at her and said: 

“You belong in the field with us. You’re strong enough to help and know enough to not get yourself or any of us killed. You won’t learn control by being safe.”

Wanda was still terrified, but being out there: fighting, using her powers to help her friends, the smiles of people so grateful that they’d come to their rescue...well. The Wanda shell developed a few cracks.

More time passed. More missions came and went. The shell grew weaker. Then she blew up a building with innocent people inside in an attempt to save Captain America and the others near him. Iron Man and Captain America fought, and Clint came to rescue her from Vision which was not something she thought possible. It was scary and sad to fight against her friends, and afterward she was bound and thrown in a cage like an animal. Even Hydra hadn’t been so cruel.

In the middle of the night she would sing the old songs, her voice brittle from crying. She would talk to Pietro and not realize that it was actually Clint answering her back.

Steve came to rescue them, because of course he did. She should have known he would, but the shell had strengthened and she had forgotten his kindness. Sam and Steve hugged each other and smiled. Steve hugged the Wanda shell and she hugged back, but it wasn’t the same. Then they got to the landing pad and there was the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, who only had one arm. Ant-Man was happy and talked a lot. Natasha smiled and hugged Sam. She didn’t smile at Barton but they clung to each other in a way that was so fierce and intimate it intimidated her. Then Natasha saw Wanda, and simply nodded to herself like she was confirming something already well known. 

Steve flew them away. Bucky sat next to him, and Sam was close by. He made some comment about moving a seat and Bucky said no and the three of them laughed and it was a different language to Wanda now. Clint sat next to Natasha and fell asleep, and she sat next to Wanda and talked in Sokovian about things ranging from the status of the world now to a new wine she found that she liked and how well it paired with a cheese no one outside of Russia had heard of. In the middle of one of her sentences, Wanda looked at her, horrified.

“I hurt you,” she said in Sokovian. “At the airport. I...I hurt you.” And the shell allowed more tears to fall. But Natasha smiled, and it was small and tight lipped but it was real.

“You did, Wanda. And I couldn’t be more proud. You fought beautifully.” Wanda couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so she just listened to Natasha talk until they arrived in Wakanda. 

Days passed. Wanda walked around the halls because she could and no one told her no. T’Challa was kind to her and it was frightening. The Winter Soldier went to sleep in cryo and Wanda would sometimes visit him and listen to the echos of his dreams. She wished she could just been sent to cryo too, and only woken back up when someone had figured out how to fix her. She didn’t think that was possible. 

Wanda hadn’t smiled in months. Even the shell forgot to try. 

Natasha was never gone for long, though she didn’t spend all her time in Wakanda. Barton went back to his farm though he and his family visited a lot. Once Laura Barton pulled Wanda into the kitchen to help make a pie for no reason at all, and then Natasha showed up and the two of them laughed but not once did they made Wanda feel like she didn’t fit in because she never smiled. 

Eventually Natasha started training her again. The facilities in Wakanda were even better than the ones at the Avengers base. They would run together through the jungle, or have T’Challa take them on murderously tough hikes. They threw punches and sparred and Natasha made her lie to the king’s kitchen staff to steal a midnight snack. They listened to politics and world events. Natasha taught her the art of listening to how people were talking so you could understand their emotions even if you couldn’t understand their language. 

One night they were sitting in the spa pools with a bottle of wine pilfered from T’Challa’s own cellar and some fruit they had picked themselves earlier that day, analyzing which one of his guards Natasha thought would be the best in a fight. 

“They don’t ever smile either,” said Wanda during a lull in the conversation. Natasha looked at her curiously.

“Oh, they do. But it’s not one you’d ever want to see,” she responded with a laugh. Wanda tilted her head.

“I don’t understand. Aren’t smiles...good?”

“Do you actually believe that’s true?” Another pause in the conversation.

“I don’t know,” Wanda said softly. “I assumed that they were. Smiles seem to make everyone else happy.” Natasha shook her head, but it didn’t seemed to be directed at Wanda. She sighed.

“Smiles can make others happy,” she said. “But you don’t have to smile. Nobody does, if they don’t want to. Not smiling doesn’t make you broken.” Wanda stared at Natasha before turning away and laying her forehead on the smooth stone around the pool. The older woman knew her companion was crying, but patiently gave her time to collect herself. She nibbled at a piece of fruit and thought over her words before continuing. 

“You know, Wanda, we were both made to be weapons. They made us with terrifying efficiency. When I made the choice to get out, I fought for it. Killed for it. When I got out I only smiled because I knew what power it had,” she said with a sip of her wine. “When I smile in battle it’s one of my greatest weapons.” 

Wanda lifted her head and looked at her curiously.

“How can a smile be a weapon?” Natasha raised an eyebrow and reached for her phone. She typed quickly and soon was pulling up a video from a website that Wanda was fairly sure was classified. It showed Black Widow fighting in some strange city, surrounded and outmanned. Clint was there with her, smiling and making quips, but she stood unsmiling and focused. Then a bullet hit Clint in the shoulder and he went down, and Natasha looked down at his fallen form for what seemed liked forever. When she looked up she surveyed the battle.

And smiled.

The battle didn’t take long after that. Wanda watched, enraptured, and saw men drop their weapons and flee when Natasha smiled at them. She didn’t blame the bad guys either. That smile was terrifying. 

“Can you teach me to do that?” Wanda stared at her mentor with wide eyes. Natasha laughed.

“Unfortunately it’s not something that can be taught, but I think it’s something you are capable of. There’s something about being who we are that makes being happy more than little scary. But being angry? Oh sweetheart, being angry is thrilling,” she said with a vicious grin. Wanda took in that grin, memorized it, saved it away to examine later. 

“I...I don’t feel much of anything. I don’t even feel angry all that often. And when I do, I don’t smile, I just...destroy,” she replied and couldn’t quite hide her shame. Natasha reached out and stroked her hair, the way her mother used to when she would cry. Wanda closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.

“I know. I don’t have your powers, but I have destruction in my past. Probably in my future, too. It’ll take time, Wanda, but I believe in you. Even if you never smile again I believe that you can hone your destructive tendencies into something you can live with.” 

Wanda had no answer for that. She wasn’t sure she was even living with herself now.

“You smile out of combat now too,” she pointed out after a time. Her friend hummed in agreement.

“Smiling is an innate skill. Babies who are born blind know how to smile when they are happy. But something about the things that we go through burns that out of us, makes us forget one of the most basic human actions. After I...after everything, I thought I’d never smile without having to think about it. I only smiled because I wanted to blend in, but every smile was tactical. Controlled. They were just another weapon in my arsenal.” 

“What changed?”

“I met people who accepted me for who and what I was. They were all broken, damaged people and they cared for me. With them, I could stop forcing a smile because they never expected it from me. Then one day Clint made some stupid comment and when I looked up I saw my reflection with a smile on it’s face.” Natasha shook her head. “At first, I didn’t even believe it was me.”

“And if I never get there? If I never smile again?” Natasha reached out grabbed the bottle of wine, topping off their glasses. She handed Wanda’s over and gently clinked their glasses together.

“And then we still accept you as our friend and ally. No second thoughts. No judgement,” she said with a serious look on her face. Then she smiled, and it was so different from the battlefield smile that Wanda felt whiplash. Grin in place, Natasha raised her glass. Wanda, more than a little off center from the conversation, nonetheless raised her glass in response. 

After the bottle of outrageously expensive wine was empty, Wanda began to sing Natasha the old songs.

After that, Wanda felt something stirring inside her shell. It was small and weak, but some piece of her that had died was slowly trying to grow back. Like a seed planted too deep, however, it lacked the strength to make anything happen. Still, the fact that it existed at all gave Wanda something to think about.

The days continued to pass. Eventually they all started training again. It felt good to run through tactics with people she liked. Barton would come back and fire nerf guns at them while they tried to practice. Natasha would steal them and fire back and soon their organized afternoon devolved until all of them were running around the palace shooting each other with brightly colored foam darts.

Much later she realized that it was the best practice session she ever had.

T’Challa asked her to teach him Sokovian, and in return started teaching her his language. Natasha somehow got a letter that Vision wrote to her, and it was overflowing with apologetic guilt. Wanda wrote a letter back, no less guilt-ridden but offering forgiveness. These things all made the thing inside her shell quiver, but never grow. 

Eventually the world changed, and bad guys came along that were stronger than grudges. Steve and Sam had found answers to help Bucky, and so they woke him up because they had to. T’Challa gave him a new arm, and they seemed...happy. Then they left the sanctuary of Wakanda and travelled out into the world again because it needed them and they needed to do something about it.

There were many battles. There were long, quiet times in between. Iron Man gave them all rooms in his tower, and Wanda even agreed to live there sometimes. Other times she would hide away at Barton’s farm, where Laura taught her to cook and told her funny stories about when she first met Clint. She didn’t even mind that she never laughed. Sometimes she went back to Wakanda to wander the halls again, because they were safe and comforting. T’Challa always welcomed her, even as he tightened the guard by the wine cellar.

She still didn’t smile, but one day during a meeting that had been reduced to a heated argument about pizza toppings she looked at her friends and realized she was something approaching happy. Natasha caught her eye and nodded, an almost imperceptible smile on her face.

Then one day they were fighting a small Hydra cell that had managed to survive. Everyone was there because they had created something Very Bad. Wanda was fighting hard but it felt like they might be losing and need to retreat. She was backed up against a wall and was tired and scared and wondering how she was going to escape to help her friends.

That was when one them decided to taunt her, saying that she was going to let everyone around her die. How she’d let innocents die, she’d let her country die. Like she’d let Pietro die.

At the sound of her brother’s name spat out of the man’s mouth, something in Wanda went very quiet. Then her body felt like it was filled with cold fire, desperate to escape.

Very slowly, one corner of her mouth turned upward.

“Uh, guys, we have a problem,” Clint’s voice crackled through the coms.

“We got lots of them, Hawkeye, can you be more specific?” Captain America responded, glass shattering in the background.

“Wanda is smirking.”

“Evacuate the building. NOW,” ordered Natasha.

Wanda wasn’t really aware of the conversation. She was aware of the rage. She was aware of her power.

By the end of it, all she had to do was enter a room with a smirk on her face and the Hydra agents wept and laid down their weapons and begged her not to kill them. Unless they did something very stupid, she’d agree. Only one person tried anything stupid.

She even left half of the building standing.

Afterwards she thought that they would turn her away, appalled by her raw destruction. But Sam, Barton, and Ant-Man were trying to figure out her coolest moment. Iron Man and Captain America were discussing how to better use some of the powers she displayed to their advantage. Vision smiled shyly at her and asked if she was okay. Bruce thanked her for taking care of his side of things. Thor was even there that time and he clapped her on the back and said she’d make a fine valkyrie. 

Then there was Natasha, who simply hugged her fiercely and grinned.

“How was it?”

“You were right. It was...thrilling.” And Natasha hugged her again.

Wanda still didn’t smile much. It remained a skill just outside her reach. She did have what Barton had dubbed “The Battle Smirk of Doom,” which made Wanda roll her eyes until the day she used it in a battle and the other side surrendered instantly. 

The after-battle meeting was closer to a party, that time. Even Bucky gave her one of his rare smiles and didn’t seem at all bothered when she merely nodded in acknowledgement. 

Wanda wasn’t sure when the shell of her being was broken and it was just her again, but it came to her clearly on one of the anniversaries of her brother’s death. It was a national day of mourning in Sokovia, and this year she actually returned to her home country. The others came with too, though Steve and Tony were promoting charities for the country and the others were probably just there for the food and to see Steve be uncomfortable in a suit. Only Natasha watched her out of the corner of her eye. Not concerned, just observing. She didn’t say anything when Wanda slipped away without a word.

Alone, Wanda visited her brother’s grave. She cried until she thought she would wash away. She told him about her new life, her new friends, her new purpose. Then she told Pietro a story about a mission where everything had gone hilariously wrong and Ant-Man and Falcon had to pretend to be strippers to escape. Somewhere in the middle she realized her face hurt and she didn’t know why. She put her fingers to mouth and traced the smile it made, amazed at how quietly it had snuck upon her. 

It didn’t last, but it had been there. Wanda imagined this was what a baby's first step felt like. It was wonderful and frightening and she felt dizzy from it’s implications. 

After her story she laid on the grass next to Pietro’s grave and sang him the old songs. She thought it was the most beautiful they had sounded in a very long time.


End file.
